Joey Bada$$

Squarepusher, “Tundra”

Feed Me Weird Things is Squarepusher’s debut record, where he still hewed closer to jungle than he later would on subsequent albums. But even at this early date, when he was still working to define his approach, the fusion elements still shine through pretty distinctly. In the end, there’s nothing really very standard about this, one of the stronger tracks on the record.

Vaz, “Chartreuse Blues”

Vaz is two-thirds of noise rock legends Hammerhead carrying on with tunes very much in the same aggressive vein. All growling guitars and pummeling rhythms, this is the good stuff. Starting on this record, Chartreuse Bull, they added a second guitarist, giving a more layered sound than they’d ever had, either as Vaz or Hammerhead, so this is probably the record to start with. Or go back and listen to Hammerhead’s Into the Vortex first. I’ll always recommend that record.

Germs, “Shut Down (Annihilation Man)”

An outlier on the one and only Germs LP, (GI), this is a live track that is triple the length of anything else on the record. A loose wander of a song, it’s all sneer and skronk, without a whole lot of direction. But the Germs were never really about having a point, so it fits in just fine.

Joey Bada$$, “Christ Conscious”

It’s impossible to not nod your head along here. I tried, I’ve done the science.

Sunless, “Spiraling Into the Unfathomable”

There’s a sort of genre of bands like Sunless who kind of approach metal from a similar direction, but don’t seem to have a consistent name for their subgenre. Bands like Gorguts, Portal, Pyrron, and others are extremely dissonant and technical, but there’s not so much of the wheedle-wheedle-whee solo pyrotechnics that characterize tech death. So, as a descriptor, I kind of go with dissonant death metal, and that seems to work OK. As an ill-defined subgenre, though, I quite like the stuff.